I’m afraid that my daughter Holly and I are responsible for the lack of rain affecting our area right now. We prayed so hard for it to stop raining the week of her wedding that we seem to have run the rain off for a long time.

With the dry hot weather, I hate to heat up the kitchen with a lot of cooking.

One of my favorite things to keep in the refrigerator during the summer is homemade chicken salad. It requires only one pot being heated up and you can change the basic recipe to suit your tastes. Making chicken salad is easy because it is one of those recipes that doesn’t require precision in measuring, and you can make lots of changes to the ingredients to come up with different results.

But even with that in mind there are a few rules from which I never deviate. First, when I cook my chicken breast I always add salt, pepper, a quartered half of an onion, a stalk or two of celery and a bay leaf to my cooking water. Secondly, I only cook my chicken until the pink is gone, nothing is worse than overcooked tough stringy chicken. Thirdly, I don’t chop my chicken. I don’t like cubes of chicken in my salad. When the chicken is cool enough to handle I pull it from the bone, making sure there is no fat, bones or gristle, and I pull it into small pieces by hand.

Below is the basic recipe for my chicken salad. From this blueprint you can add or subtract ingredients. Mandarin orange, green grapes sliced in half and sliced almonds or toasted pecan and chopped apples are a few of my favorite combinations.

Chicken Salad

1 pound of chicken breasts (or any quantity you want)

1/2 yellow onion, quartered

1-2 stalks of celery

1 bay leaf

Add all of these ingredients to a large pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat and simmer until the chicken is done. The cooking time will vary depending on the amount of chicken in your pot, cook just until done. Remove from the broth and let cool. I usually let the broth cool and save some of it in freezer containers for cooking later. Don’t let the chicken cool completely, when it is cool enough to handle easily, begin pulling it from the bone. Make sure you get out all of the bones, fat and gristle. Pull into small pieces.

Place the chicken in a bowl and add the following salt and pepper, 3 stalks of celery that are diced fine, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, a dash or two of Tony Chachere’s seasoning, and — next to the chicken — the most important ingredient, mayonnaise. I only add enough mayonnaise to bind my chicken together, and I use Blue Plate or Hellmann’s.

From here you are on your own. Sometimes I add 2 boiled eggs, chopped coarsely, and a little pickle relish, preferably dill.

I also like to take this basic recipe and add 1 small can of sliced black olives, 1 chopped red bell pepper, half of a white onion that has been chopped finely, 1 can of water chestnuts drained and chopped and combine with a 12 ounces of penne pasta that has been cooked al dente and drained. This makes a great chicken pasta salad and the addition of pasta is inexpensive and stretches the dish farther.

Christina Hall writes a weekly column for The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at christina.hall@natchezdemocrat.com.